Library
Philosophy and
Practice 2012

The Identity Crisis of Libraries in the Attention
Economy

Introduction

In the present day world, the ecology that the human
beings inhabit is laden with various kinds of spaces and places. Our
ecology encompasses different kinds of cyberspaces and market places
that continuously sway our mind. This character of continuously
influencing and controlling the human psyche according to Herbert Simon
makes our economy an ‘attention economy’. The concept of ‘attention
economy’ revolves around the innumerable existing spaces and places and
the human attention. Attention Economy is considered to be one where
there is scarcity of human attention. Davenport & Beck defines
attention as, “focused mental engagement on a particular message or
piece of information” and the attention economy as one where the
scarcest resource is no longer just “capital, labour, information and
knowledge,” but human attention (Davenport & Beck 2001, 20). In
the attention economy there is a constant competition among different
spaces and places to attract the maximum segment of the scarcest modern
resource. In the modern world of consumerism only those survive the
tide who seeks the attention of many. Identity assertion can be stated
as the order of the day. This continuous strive of representation and
recognition by the individuals and institutions determine the entities
success and failure. Looking at the way the nature of the modern
society restructures itself Lanham writes, “We are moving from material
to method. Stuff in them is getting evaporated before our stuff-clouded
eyes ... [and] the world has become a stage, staging itself for a
visitor’s eye” (Lanham, 2006). Lanham means to say that the present day
world has adapted ‘change’ as its permanent character. Today, the world
is moving so fast that it takes no time for a mode of technology to
become outdated. In the attention economy life and death of every thing
depends upon the attention it attracts and the changes it adapts. In
this sense attention plays a significant role in the development of
libraries also.

Herbert Simon was the pioneer to articulate the concept
of attention economics when he wrote:

"...in an
information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of
something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes.
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention
of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of
attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the
overabundance of information sources that might consume it" (Simon,
1971).

According to him, in the attention economy the
information has the power to consume the attention of the people. The
scarcity of attention is the result of overload of information.
Therefore, the competition is among the varieties of information in the
environment. Generally, a person looks at the thing that draws his/her
attention. In doing so the capacity to look at other things diminishes.
This is why it is important in the attention economy for information
organizations to define ways they can command and hold the attention of
prospective patrons. In the attention economy representation of
guarantees the sustenance of the organization. Identity crisis may be
due to inadequate representation in the attention economy. The identity
crisis in the attention economy may be recurring, as in the changing
world we are required to constantly redefine and represent ourselves.
We are in the time when stability is an exception and change the rule.
To make their presence felt in such overloaded information economies
and the fast moving world libraries and librarians will have to
represent themselves. In the attention economy presence of libraries in
the society would not help them get the users. They need to make their
presence felt as a significant channel in knowledge generation and
dissemination process. To gain recognition they will have to move away
from the traditional way the libraries functioned. There is a need for
libraries to pierce into the information environment of the people in
order to seek the attention of the potential readers. Resources of the
libraries will remain unexplored unless the information about their
resources is disseminated to the information seekers. Today,
information about information is more important than the information
itself. Generally, there are two significant ways in which people
gather information namely, self-initiated acquisition of information
and environment imparted acquisition of information. Self-initiated
acquisition of information occur when user know what information he/she
wants. In libraries this kind of search for information will be useful
if the reader know what information he/she wants. On the other hand,
environment imparted acquisition of information is initiated outside
ones mind. Actually this kind of information is feeded into persons
mind from his/her environment. We come across this kind of information
acquisition everyday. Advertising agencies have learned to take
astonishing advantage of this kind of information acquisition. Most of
the need for information arises due to the environment imparted
acquisition of information. In the attention economies libraries need
to exploit the available opportunities in the environment of the reader
and create the new ones to assure the maximum utilization of their
resources and for their sustained development.

In today’s world longer invisibility leads to permanent
disappearance. Libraries being the part of modern society cannot be an
exception of this phenomenon. There are number of competitors in the
market trying to grab the attention of the people. Libraries will have
to be a part of this competition. Along with building mega structures
housed with books and journals and all kinds of information in variety
of formats, contemporary conditions also demands from libraries to
build mega strategies for attracting human attention.

Libraries in the Attention Economy

Grounding his argument on the basis of the common
discourses on information and its relationship to economics, John
Buschman writes, “If information and its related sets of critical
skills are as important to economic and political participation as we
keep insisting, then what information we produce, how we keep it, what
we keep, and how it is absorbed or not are crucial questions in our
culture - and libraries are important (if undervalued) institutions in
this” (Buschman, 2005). And reflecting on the condition of libraries in
contemporary times he further questions, “If ... [information] is as
important to our economy and politics as we have been saying, then why
are . . . libraries so threatened on the fiscal front?” (Buschman,
2005) The paradoxical situation in front of us is that, on one hand, we
compare information with money and relate our development positively
with information we consume and on the other hand, we come across the
disinclination of the people towards libraries. The phenomenon has
twined out to be common to all kinds of libraries. The use of academic
libraries is dependent on the policies of the host institution,
financial availability, and the educational system. Most of the
corporate sector units’ do not have a library and even if they have it
is somewhere isolated from the central working areas. School libraries
are getting merged together to become a central library for number of
schools. In urban areas the situation is better as we can find some
importance being given to the libraries and the young generation is
encouraged to read and keep themselves attached to the books. Public
libraries are being closed down and even if they are open one can only
see a librarian sitting in and trying to clean the dust from the books.
This shows that library as a social institution is under crisis. The
condition of a librarian as an individual is similar to the situation
of libraries. Mostly, we find positions of librarians getting reduced
within the institutions, appointment of computer operators in place of
a librarian, librarians paid less than what they deserve, librarians
not being given permanent positions in the organisation, librarians
facing difficulties in getting funds form the management to maintain
and extend its services. Hence, even librarians are experiencing
problems in getting recognition within the institutions.

Number of studies in the field of library and
information science has been done indicating several kinds crisis.
Nilsen and McKechnie brought forth one of the aspect of crisis where
they studied the users’ ignorance about library works. Nilsen and
McKechnie investigated the phenomenon in a study in which they asked
library users about who takes decision regarding the selection of books
in the library. Sixty percent of their respondents did not identify
library staff as responsible for this important aspect of collection
development and assigned this work instead to library boards,
government agencies, the library’s customers, or some automatic
process. Nilsen and McKechnie accounted this invisibility to the
professionals reluctance to “claim expert knowledge” counterpart those
they serve (Nilsen and McKechnie, 2002). In 2003, OCLC submitted a
report titled The 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan: Pattern
Recognition-A Report to the OCLC Membership identifying and
describing issues and trends that are impacting and will impact
libraries. The introduction to the Scan states “It
has become increasingly difficult to characterize and describe the
purpose of using libraries […] The relationships among the information
professional, the user and the content have changed and continue to
change” (Wilson 2004, ix). Another way of stating this is that trends
indicate a conflict between the environment and resources that
libraries offer and the environment and resources that information
consumers want and use. A yet another study conducted by OCLC (Online
Computer Library Centre) in 2005 titled Perception of
Libraries and Information Resources: A Report to the OCLC Membership
concluded that libraries are no more the first place people approach
when looking for information. These studies clearly indicate the
problem the libraries are experiencing today. Criticising the
modifications or modernization of the names the library science schools
have been adopting, Michael Gorman contends that “[librarians] do good
work and should not be afraid to proclaim it”, he identifies library
education in the United States as a “train wreck” and claims that
dismissing library from the schools’ names is
“symbolic of the deep ill, the existential crisis, that has gripped our
profession” (Gorman 2000, 67). Therefore, it seems, the crisis
resulting due to the changes taking place in the society is structuring
itself into the psychological crisis among the librarians and is
reflected in the changes taking place in the discipline and profession.
These indicators are the reactions − for the reason − libraries and
librarians kept themselves away from the cycle of representation,
recognition and survival. Still, if libraries/librarians do not
represent themselves to gain recognition in the society and to attract
the attention of people towards them then the path of information
seekers and libraries with diverge from each other.

Over and above the absence of visibility of libraries in
society, also to some extent the penetration of computer technology in
the information world has detrimentally impacted library profession.
The intention, here, is not to criticize the technological developments
that have taken place in the production and dissemination of
information. In fact, computer technology has revolutionized the whole
process of information generation and dissemination and the working of
libraries. But, due to the integration of computer and communication
technologies, in the past few years internet has invented as many
hurdles as it has opened the doors of opportunities for the libraries.
For instance, Google with all its information services has drawn huge
attention from the libraries as the users’ no longer considers
libraries as the only source of obtaining information. People now think
that any information need can be satisfied on the Internet. With
varieties of information services, Google has taken away a large part
of libraries territory. It is the major contributor in convincing the
information seekers that their information need can easily be satisfied
through the internet. Libraries cannot challenge Google in terms of the
quantity of information it holds and the search options it gives.
Genealogy of libraries indicates that people have always consulted
libraries for their information needs, but now, Google has replaced
libraries in fulfilling many of those needs. It is not that libraries
are not in a position to provide information. In fact, Gorman proposes
that “regardless of the ready access to information offered by the
Internet, libraries will continue to have not only a feasible but an
important future because while electronic resources are valuable, they
are, in most instances, enhancements, not replacements, of other
[library] collections and services” (Gorman 2000, 31). He argues that
the traditional library “is one that selects, collects, and gives
access to all the forms of recorded knowledge and information that are
relevant to its mission and to the needs of the community it services,
and assists and instructs in the use of those resources,” including
electronic resources. Libraries, we must never forget, are selections,
defined by what they exclude. Google, on the other hand, is truly
universal in a way even our most universal libraries have never been.
Libraries aim to be deep selections - and the use of that depth is our
challenge. Librarians should learn how to make use of their rich
collection in the electronic environment.

Libraries are, unlike in earlier times, no more in the
vicinity of huge number of patrons. With the development in the
technology the attitude of society towards different things also
changes. In earlier time people were satisfied with the information
they used to get from the libraries available to them. In the
globalised information age there are numerous sources of obtaining
information. Information seekers now have the choice regarding the
source of obtaining the information. Now they want to have the
information demanded by them in their desired content, format and time.
Librarians will have to prepare themselves to meet the demands of a new
generation of information seekers.

Strategies for libraries in the Attention Economy

Changes in the way of production and dissemination of
information brought in changes in the perception of the readers. In the
modern world with constantly changing environment the perception of the
people also keeps on changing. The reason behind Brenda Dervin’s
emphasis on shifting the research attention from system to user, after
reviewing ARIST literature, was to understand the way users perceive
the services libraries provide. Libraries strategy should be based on
the perception of the users. Librarians should study the perception of
the users, understand their needs and preferences and design their
products and services accordingly. Once this is done then the promotion
and marketing of these products and services would gains better
response.

Promotional activity can take many forms and the media
of promotion should depend on the nature of target audience. As more
and more people are becoming conversant with information technology the
best way of promoting library service is by using web interface. It is
the easy way of reaching them quickly and cheaply. Librarians can
personalize the service by providing Current Awareness Service and
Selective Dissemination of Information service via emails. Librarians
should also learn how to exploit the internet for providing services
and for helping users in searching online information and maximising
the utility of their searching time. Library website serves as a
promotional tool for advertising in-house library services and
electronic information resources on the web. Today, virtual visibility
is more recognized than physical visibility. According to Puacz, “if
the online presence of a library is not informative, innovative, and
service-oriented, there is little to stop e-patrons from surfing on to
different sites that better meet their needs” (Puacz, 2002, 113).
Library website has a great potential to attract attention of people.
It acts as a mirror of library services and resources. Also, a kind of
a participatory library service that Michael E. Casey and Laura C.
Savastinuk accentuate in their book Library 2.0: A Guide to
Participatory Library Service can be attempted. According to
their study users of the library can be involved in building the
collection of library, improving the services library provides,
inviting user comments on resources for library’s OPAC. By doing this
user’s can be attracted and encouraged to make use of the library.

Taking into consideration the marketing strategies that
the libraries enforce White opines that “Libraries do not market:
occasionally they advertise what they already provide. However,
increasingly we now anti-advertise, when budget cuts have made it
difficult to maintain standards of service. [we allow] the budget to
define the program rather than have the program define the budget”
(White 1997, 116). Libraries have done much to gain recognition in the
society and also taken advantages of emerging trends of accessing
information for all purposes. But with the introduction of technology
into information world, with all its development it has been trying to
eliminate libraries from the information generation and dissemination
process. One of the reasons is that the community of users that the
libraries are intended to serve are not really aware of the services
that they offer. Moreover, people are already under the illusion that
every thing they want is available on the internet; whereas most of the
librarians are aware about the limitation of online information. All of
the information is not free and authentic on the internet. Majority of
the people are not willing or can not afford to spend money on online
information. Taking this situation in to consideration, librarians need
to move out and put this fact in front of people and show them how
their libraries can be really fruitful than relying on the internet for
every information. For doing this librarians should have the knowledge
about their collections, their strengths and their weaknesses. Hernon
and Altman maintain that “Unless ... [readers] and the collection come
together both interestingly and meaningfully ... the library is nothing
more than an expensive warehouse” (Hernon and Altman 1998, 6).
Therefore, to give meaning to their existence and to flourish in the
attention economies libraries should market and promote their services.

The genealogy of libraries indicates that libraries have
always been providing services and the nature of the services has
always changed with the changes in the technologies. In the attention
economy just providing the services to the users will not ensure the
maximum utilization of library resources. There is a need to market the
library services and resources. Leerburger contends that “The
overarching goal of marketing is to assure that the library remains as
an information center within the community” (Leerburger 1989, 8).
Therefore, marketing helps the libraries to retain their importance in
the society and serve as a space where life long learning is
facilitated. But, according to Siess “If no one knows about your
library and how it can help the community [and if no one knows what
services it provides] the library will not-and should not-continue to
exist” (Siess 2003, 15). And obviously librarians do not want the
libraries to die. Commenting on the need of marketing for the libraries
in contemporary society, Bell writes, “Overlooked eventually can mean
unemployed. Marketing means creating an awareness of your value” (Bell,
1994). In times when people are more inclined towards online
information, giving them required information in time, form, content
and channel that they prefer will give them the reason and
encouragement to use libraries. To make people aware about the library,
librarians need to communicate to the potential customer the value of
using the library. Marketing improves the visibility of libraries in
the society and of the librarian within the institution. Marketing
includes finding what costumers need and to evaluate how they perceive
the products and services. Librarians should take advantage of all
forms of communication available for marketing. It ensures libraries
continued survival and growth, and positions it as an indispensable
resource which satisfies a need that cannot be met else where.

Another problem with libraries is their physical
invisibility. Knowledge about the existence of the library is very
important. Citizens should be aware about the libraries located in
their vicinity. If they are not aware about libraries around them,
obviously they will turn towards internet to acquire what ever
information-authentic or unauthentic-they get. By acquiring the books
and other information resources in libraries and not making people
aware about it librarians are actually interrupting a knowledge
generation and dissemination process. To become a bridge and to persist
as a significant channel in the knowledge generation and knowledge
dissemination process libraries should remain active in the society.
Libraries should engage themselves in activities that attract the
attention of people towards it. Some of the traditional methods that
libraries can follow to attract the attention of people also include
organizing monthly exhibitions and occasional lectures that can give
them a reason to come to the library and are encouraged to know new
things. Book clubs and book talks can be organized to keep people
engaged with reading. Regular discussions can be conducted to develop
interest for reading among users. Reading, said the great English
essayist Matthew Arnold, “is culture.” By encouraging the reading habit
and preserving it, libraries are actually preserving our culture.
Acting in a modern way libraries should strengthen their online
visibility. Acquiring as many electronic resources as possible, either
individually or by involving in consortia, librarians should aim to
make their libraries search box as compatible as of Google. Libraries
need to offer traditional services more efficiently and new services
which appeal to those comfortable with new ways of accessing
information. Maintaining good public relations and satisfying the
information needs of people that aroused after engaging them in various
activities organised by libraries, librarians can try to convert the
visitor in to a regular user.

Since centuries libraries have been finding new way to
extend and actively seek users’ participation. Andrew Carnegie in his
time designed libraries that served both educational as well as
recreational purposes. In 1890s his libraries had showers,
gyms, billiards and barbers. He projected libraries as community
catalysts. He knew that to get people interested in libraries there is
a need to think beyond the traditional boundaries and render
opportunities for interaction as much as specific services. In the
attention economy there is a need to take library services
to users, rather than expecting users to come to the library. In the
networked environment most of the potential users are going online to
satisfy their information needs. In such a scenario most of the users
can be found interacting and sharing on social networking sites like
facebook, second life, orkut and many others. Libraries need to reach
out in such spaces to get the attention of the users. Some of the
libraries have been trying to reach their patrons through such social
networking sites. Such a platform can be used by libraries to provide
the latest news about the libraries, to provide digital reference
services, to act as a kind of online discussion forum. Social
networking tools allow libraries to interact with people in their
natural environment, and to provide timely, meaningful and intuitive
assistance.

Conclusion

Social change is about restructuring of the social
institutions. Social change brought by technology has been quite rapid
during the last few decades. Being in the organic society social
institutions have to evolve themselves according to the emerging
patterns. Libraries as social institutions also have to restructure
themselves in order to sustain in the changing world. Genealogy of the
libraries establishes that libraries have always evolved themselves
with the changing society. In the attention economy libraries need to
satisfy informational, technological as well as psychological needs of
the users. Libraries need to generate interest among the readers
through their products and services. Traditional media advertisers
followed a model that indicated consumers went through a linear process
called AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Attention is
therefore a major and the first stage in the process of converting
non-consumers. Libraries can get the attention of the people by
perforating their psychological environment which is only possible by
promoting and marketing the services. Therefore, in such a scenario
there is a necessity on the part of libraries to reach out with their
products and services using varieties of strategies that can attract
the attention of people towards them.

Nilsen, K., & McKechnie, E. F. (2002). Behind
closed doors: An exploratory study of the perceptions of librarians and
the hidden intellectual work of collection development in Canadian
public libraries. Library Quarterly, 72(3), 294–325.